Faraz al-Mazrawi runs a Muslim Brotherhood social services organization in the Jabal al-Nasr district of Amman, Jordan. The long food queue outside the center’s kitchen every morning attests to the poverty of the neighborhood, which is made up primarily of Palestinian refugees.

Jordan, like other developing countries, has been badly hit by the global rise in food prices. The price of meat has risen by 25%; tomatoes, a staple of low-income households here, cost five times what they did a short while ago.

To counter the crisis, the government has cut import tariffs on some foodstuffs, and increased public sector salaries by 20 percent. But that has meant little for the plight of Jabal a-Nasr’s 150,000 residents, among whom unemployment stands at over 20%; life there has become, in some cases, a struggle to get enough food to survive.
Fawaz says he’s seen increased criminality in his neighborhood and families foraging in the trash for food.

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